3D printing is increasingly becoming a part of daily life, sparking a creative and manufacturing revolution, as it's finally more accessible to artists and amateur users through affordable desktop printers and services like Shapeways. That is also known as "additive manufacturing," and is essentially the blending of technology, science and art, with the ability to transform a number of industries including toys, fashion, medicine, electronics and automotive.

It’s essentially a magical process where a machine reminiscent of the Star Trek Replicator seems to create three-dimensional objects out of thin air. We'll go through the basic printing methods & materials, go over some free 3D modeling apps including Tinkercad and Blender, cover methods of working with polygon geometry to prepare our models, as well as cool techniques to lower the printing cost.

We'll then upload the optimized models to Shapeways, the world's leading 3D Printing marketplace and community, for final checks before sending them to the printers. Though the videos will mostly focus on using Blender, the concepts apply to any 3D application of your choice.

By the end of this Blender training you’ll have learned the fundamental workflows of preparing and optimizing your 3D models for any type of 3D printer.

I was fortunate enough to be selected by Novedge to attend the ACADIA conference in LA to report on their behalf. This is one of the articles I have written for the Novedge Blog, about my experience at the conference, my findings and musings of the workshops and presentations, as well as the extremely fun Hackathon on the final day of the conference.

ArchiTrek The Next Generation - Top 10 reasons to attend the ACADIA conferenceIn our era of digital abundance, the way we approach design is changing fundamentally. It’s no longer a novelty in our profession, but a process that defines our expanding realm of architectural exploration that can inform our design intent, while embracing constraints, iteration and user-input in the creative practice. Through intense workshops, paradigm-shifting conversations and enlightening lectures, the ACADIA 2014 conference strived to expose the bleeding edge of contemporary computational design + aesthetics in the “post-digital” age.Coming down from the high of this year’s ACADIA conference took a few days of recovery and reflection, as it was an electrifying experience of creativity, applied research and knowledge exchange with some of the leading experts of the field, concluding with a design “Hackathon” that had the participants firing enough neurons to power the entire campus.
The conference gathered an international crowd of over 550 architectural explorers, focusing on computational design through experimental research of generative modeling techniques, robotic fabrication, emerging design technologies and creative coding. New paradigms of computing, experimental practice and innovative ways of design thinking were presented, all challenging the conventional methods in which architecture is generated and experienced. The Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) is all about delving into the intricacies of design through research and education, while striving to promote the importance of enhancing computers and technology for the fields of architecture, planning and building science.Instead of a protracted day-by-day report of the presentations and events, which presented state-of-the-art research and applications in their relative branch of computational design, I thought it would be more useful to list some of the best reasons anyone excited by design should attend the conference. Continue Reading... >>

So, Autodesk took the leap to the Mac by redesigning the minimalistic interface and some functionalities from the ground up, laying the foundations for future growth and increased capabilities. But if you’re switching from the Windows side to the Mac version, there are a few things you need to get used to - for one, there’s no Ribbon! It’s not a full Windows to Mac porting porting of the environment, but an app that feels to fit in the Mac OSX ecosystem, while still preserving the familiarity of the other side.

That’s where great video tutorials come into play, I must watched over 150 hours of tutorials on my iPad while commuting in the past few weeks. The visual learning path - which is the core of “monkey see, monkey do” - is essentially a direct link to the Matrix. Books and help manuals are great for reference, but if you wanna learn fast and effectively, VIDEO is the holy grail. I’ve seen a lot of brilliant tutorials on Youtube and used all the big guns in the professional visual learning field including Lynda.com, Digital Tutors, CGcookie, Udemy, Skillshare,…..you name it, I’ve probably tried it, and they’re all fantastic.